Yonaton Behar, 49, moved to a West Bank set tlement 23 years ago. The Stuyvesant HS graduate works as a fund-raiser and spokesman for the settlement’s yeshiva and, with his wife, Jackie, has six children. He shares what it’s like to live in the line of fire — and why he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The first Palestinian intifada uprising had just erupted when I moved to the tiny Har Bracha settlement in Israel’s West Bank in 1987.

There were only seven other families here. Most of us didn’t have telephones in our homes, and there was just one car.

We are all still here; we are like soldiers. Being here is fulfilling the tremendous commandment to protect the land. There’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather live.

But our village on the southern ridge of Mount Gerizim has always been very different from my childhood home in Jackson Heights, Queens.

My children go to school in bulletproof buses. A fence surrounds the 250-family village to keep away terrorists. There’s also a military outpost assigned to protect the area.

Whenever I leave my village, I pass an array of security cameras along the fence, while soldiers at a checkpoint dutifully watch video screens to make sure no gunmen are lurking or sneaking in.

Our settlement, near the Palestinian-populated city of Nablus, was founded in 1984 and is one of the most strategic in Israel. At night, you can see the lights from coastal cities of Ashkelon in the south and Chadera in the north.

If the Arabs were sitting up here, they could very well fire missiles into Tel Aviv.

Small towns like mine keep terrorists from taking over the area and serve as buffer zones for the larger cities.

We live in the shadow of death. Dozens of innocent settlers in nearby towns have been gunned down by heartless terrorists.

In 2002, two fellow former New Yorkers, one of them a pregnant woman, were shot here by a terrorist who sprang out of nowhere as they walked together near our yeshiva. Both survived; the gunman was killed.

But it just strengthens our will to continue building. The more we grow, the safer it becomes.

The leftist media want to portray us as crazy. But the people I meet in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are always encouraging.

“Because of where you are, I can sleep at night in peace and quiet,” they say.

I don’t know what all the brouhaha is about in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to build an additional 1,600 homes there. Isn’t that our right? Why is this causing such diplomatic tension?

Hundreds of Palestinian rioters in Jerusalem are throwing stones at our homes. They should be thrown out of the country.

Building is going on in Har Bracha at this very moment. There are 70 homes being constructed here over the next two years.